William Engdahl is an award-winning geopolitical analyst and strategic risk consultant whose internationally best-selling books have been translated into thirteen foreign languages.

Washington’s explanation that its strengthening missile shield in Europe is being built to guard against the Iranian nuclear threat is no more believable than it was 10 years ago.

Despite Russia’s recent efforts to broker a peaceful resolution of the Syrian chemical weapons crisis, as well as its good offices in helping resolve the Iranian nuclear conflict with Washington, the Obama administration is moving ahead with its highly provocative nuclear Ballistic Missile ‘Defense’ (BMD) deployments around Russia. What we are not being told by Western politicians is the fact that this action, far from peaceful, brings the world closer than ever to nuclear war by miscalculation.

RT: What I want to talk about first of all is the ongoing at the moment APEC summit. You’ll be going there very shortly – in Vladivostok because it’s the first time that Russia has held it, a prestigious event. But it always begs the question – what’s actually achieved at these events, events like that, like the G8, G20? Continue reading »

Earlier today, we presented the latest developments in the escalating possibility of an imminent air (and potentially land) campaign targeting Syria by the “western world”, a move that would infuriate not only Iran, but also Russia and China, both of which have made it clear they would not sit idly by and let such an “aggression” stand. Now it is Russia’s turn to retaliate. Cutting straight to the chase – in a nationally televized appearance by Russian president Dmitry Medvedev: in response to what the Russian believes is an active incursion and a potential act of eventual aggression on behalf of NATO countries in Eastern Europe (and hence the US), he he said the following (7 minutes in): “First, I am instructing the Defense Ministry to immediately put the missile attack early warning radar station in Kaliningrad on combat alert. Second, protective cover of Russia’s strategic nuclear weapons, will be reinforced as a priority measure under the programme to develop out air and space defenses. Third, the new strategic ballistic missiles commissioned by the Strategic Missile Forces and the Navy will be equipped with advanced missile defense penetration systems and new highly-effective warheads. Fourth, I have instructed the Armed Forces to draw up measures for disabling missile defense system data and guidance systems if need be… Fifth, if the above measures prove insufficient, the Russian Federation will deploy modern offensive weapon systems in the west and south of the country, ensuring our ability to take out any part of the US missile defense system, in Europe. One step in this process will be to deploy Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad Region. Other measures to counter the European missile defense system will be drawn up and implemented as necessary. Furthermore, if the situation continues to develop not in Russia’s favor we reserve the right to discontinue further disarmament and arms control measures. Besides, given the intrinsic link between strategic offensive and defensive arms, conditions for our withdrawal from the New START Treaty could also arise.” That said, he concludes that Russia is still open to dialog. However, if Obama merely intends to bomb any nation at will, we are very much concerned that everything Medvedev has just threatened will be enacted. And exponentially more so when Putin comes back in charge. One thing is certain – Russia is not North Korea, and taking this speech for more empty jawboning is probably not the wisest option.

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president embraced the fiery rhetoric of the Cold War threatening to target and if necessary destroy America’s planned European missile defence shield once it is built.

In what may be the most serious blow to US-Russia relations since President Barack Obama came to power, Mr Medvedev raised the prospect of Russia launching missile attacks on European Union member states such as Poland, Romania and Spain as well as Nato member Turkey.

“I have given the armed forces the task of drawing up plans to destroy the information and command and control systems of the (US/Nato) anti-missile shield,” he said.

“Our Nato partners are not for now showing any readiness to take our concerns about the architecture of the European missile shield into account, something which convinces us that their plans are aimed at Russia.” Upping the ante further, he said Russia’s anxiety was so great that it would reserve the right to tear up existing nuclear arms control treaties and halt talks about new treaties.

The White House immediately rebuffed Mr Medvedev, making it clear Washington would not be altering its plans in any way.

“We will not in any way limit or change our deployment plans in Europe,” said Tommy Vietor, a National Security Council spokesman. “In multiple channels, we have explained to Russian officials that the missile defence systems planned for deployment in Europe do not and cannot threaten Russia’s strategic deterrent.”

The shield that Russia objects to so strongly is designed to shoot down missiles from rogue states such as Iran but is years away from being operational. Turkey, Poland, Romania and Spain have all agreed to join what is a diluted version of a controversial plan first proposed by former President George W. Bush.

The Russian president has called on NATO to clarify Moscow’s role in a European missile system, warning if no agreement is reached, Russia will be forced to deploy “offensive” nuclear weapons.

“So this is not a joking matter. We expect from our NATO partners a direct and unambiguous answer,” Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin.

“In either case, we are either together with NATO, or we separately find an adequate response to the existing problem,” he said.

Under former US President George W. Bush the United States proposed a plan to deploy a missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic — a plan which was fiercely opposed to by Russia. Moscow said it would deem such a deployment a threat to its sovereignty and would properly respond to it.

In comments to Russian news agency ITAR-TASS that went largely unnoticed, the head of Rosobshemash said the new missile would be capable of overcoming any nuclear missile shield that the Americans or indeed anyone else might build.

“This applies in the fullest sense to the USA’s anti-missile defence system and to Nato’s (planned) European missile defence system,” said Artur Usenkov.

Associated Press= WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is sending a special radar-equipped warship to the Mediterranean Sea next week, the first step in the development of a broad anti-ballistic missile system to protect Europe against a potential Iranian nuclear threat, the Pentagon said Tuesday.

The move marks the first of the Obama administration’s four-phase plan to put land- and sea-based radars and interceptors in several European locations during the next decade.

Endorsed by NATO during a summit in Lisbon last year, the missile shield has triggered opposition from Russia and set off lengthy negotiations over the future expanded ability to shoot down ballistic missiles in the region.

John F. Plumb, principal director for Pentagon nuclear and missile defense policy, said Tuesday that the USS Monterey will leave Norfolk, Virginia, next week, heading to a six-month deployment in the Mediterranean. The ship’s mission, he said, will lay groundwork for the unfolding missile defense plan there.

“Here is our first concrete demonstration of our commitment to the missile defense of our deployed forces, allies and partners in Europe,” Plumb said in an interview. “We said we were going to do it, and now we’re doing it.”

Under the plan laid out by the Obama administration in 2009, the missile shield would begin with ship-based anti-missile interceptors and radars. Later this year, the United States plans to add land-based radars in southern Europe. Plumb said officials are still in discussions with several nations, but the exact location for those radars had not yet been determined.

In phase two, land-based interceptors would be deployed in Romania in 2015, followed by the placement of interceptors in Poland in 2018. Each phase calls for a more sophisticated and capable interceptor, culminating at the end of the decade with the deployment of the last version planned as of now.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
The Russian president has called on NATO to clarify Moscow’s role in a European missile system, warning if no agreement is reached, Russia will be forced to deploy “offensive” nuclear weapons.

“So this is not a joking matter. We expect from our NATO partners a direct and unambiguous answer,” Dmitry Medvedev said during a meeting with Russia’s NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin.

“In either case, we are either together with NATO, or we separately find an adequate response to the existing problem,” he said.

Pentagon says Patriot shield will deter strike on American allies in the Gulf

A Patriot missile is launched during an Israeli-US military excercise in the Negev desert in southern Israel in February 2001. Photograph: Reuters

Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.

The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.

American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat.

Chris McGreal: ‘The US is prepared to move decisively against any threat from Iran’ Link to this audio

The deployment comes after Obama’s attempts to emphasise diplomacy over confrontation in dealing with Iran – a contrast to the Bush administration’s approach – have failed to persuade Tehran to open its nuclear installations to international controls. The White House is now trying to engineer agreement for sanctions focused on Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, believed to be in charge of the atomic programme.

Washington has not formally announced the deployment of the Patriots and other anti-missile systems, but by leaking it to American newspapers the administration is evidently seeking to alert Tehran to a hardening of its position.

The administration is deploying two Patriot batteries, capable of shooting down incoming missiles, in each of the four Gulf countries. Kuwait already has an older version of the missile, deployed after Iraq’s invasion. Saudi Arabia has long had the missiles, as has Israel.

An unnamed senior administration official told the New York Times: “Our first goal is to deter the Iranians. A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.”

The chief of the US central command, General David Petraeus, said in a speech 10 days ago that countries in the region are concerned about Tehran’s military ambitions and the prospect of it becoming a dominant power in the Gulf: “Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the Gulf front.” Continue reading »

For a system designed to protect the country from nuclear oblivion, the US national missile defence project’s history of failure has long raised eyebrows among scientists.

Years of testing have seen rocket-propelled interceptors refuse to launch from their silos, fail to separate from their boosters and miss their targets, sometimes by hundreds of miles.

Military officials can claim only a 50% hit rate, and only then in tests that are far removed from a real world attack scenario, said David Wright, a physicist and co-director of global security at the Union of Concerned Scientists in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Some tests were delayed for months because the weather was not considered good enough for the interceptor to find its target.

When tests did go ahead, missile operators knew when the target would be launched and its trajectory in the sky. The missile system that was due to be installed in Europe had undergone even less rigorous testing. The plans included a two-stage interceptor which has yet to even begin flight tests.

– Obama Offered Deal to Russia in Secret Letter:
WASHINGTON — President Obama sent a secret letter to Russia’s president last month suggesting that he would back off deploying a new missile defense system in Eastern Europe if Moscow would help stop Iran from developing long-range weapons, American officials said Monday. (Source: The New York Times)

“The planned European missile defence system would have essentially no capability to defend against a real missile attack. Independent and US governmental technical analyses have shown that any country that could field a long-range missile could also add decoys and other counter-measures to that missile that would defeat a defence system like that being proposed for Europe,” the letter stated.

President Barack Obama has announced that he is shelving former President Bush’s plans for a missile defence system in Europe.

The project had become a major irritant in relations between the United States and Russia.

Instead of basing long-range interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic, Mr Obama said there would be a redesigned defensive system that would be cheaper and more effective against the threat from Iranian missiles.

Russia to drop missile deployment plan: envoy

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Russia will not deploy new missiles in the Kaliningrad enclave now that the United States has dropped plans to build an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia’s envoy to NATO said on Friday.

Dmitry Rogozin also welcomed a proposal from NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen for more cooperation with Russia on anti-missile systems.

“It was very positive, very constructive and we have to analyze together all the sec-gen’s proposals for the new beginning of NATO-Russia cooperation,” Rogozin told a news conference.

On Russian plans to deploy medium-range missiles in Kaliningrad, which borders Poland and Lithuania, he said: “I hope you can understand logic … if we have no radars or no missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland, we don’t need to find some response.”

“Medvedev also said Russia would try to electronically jam the U.S. system.”

The Russians supposedly have developed scalar weapons that can easily take out any electronic equipment and those longitudinal waves cannot be shielded.
___________________________________________________________________________

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia has intensified efforts to develop new ballistic missiles in response to U.S. plans to deploy an anti-missile system in Europe, Interfax news agency quoted a top Russian general as saying on Friday.

The decision by the United States to deploy interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic has angered Moscow, which says Russia’s national security will be compromised by the U.S. anti-missile system.

Colonel-General Nikolai Solovtsov, Commander of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, was quoted by Interfax as saying that Russia had bolstered its efforts to develop new missiles.

“At the present time, work has been intensified to create the research and technical foundation for new missile systems, which will be needed after 2020,” Solovtsov said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced on November 5 that Moscow would install Iskander short-range missile systems near the Polish border if Washington proceeds with its missile plans.

Medvedev also said Russia would try to electronically jam the U.S. system.

A missile is launched from the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force ship Chokai in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii November 20, 2008. (Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force/Handout/Reuters)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Japanese warship failed to shoot down a ballistic missile target in a joint test with U.S. forces Wednesday because of a glitch in the final stage of an interceptor made by Raytheon Co, a U.S. military official said.

The kinetic warhead’s infrared “seeker” lost track in the last few seconds of the $55 million test, about 100 miles above Hawaiian waters, said U.S. Rear Admiral Brad Hicks, program director of the Aegis sea-based leg of an emerging U.S. anti-missile shield.

“This was a failure,” he said in a teleconference with reporters. It brought the tally of Aegis intercepts to 16 in 20 tries.

The problem “hopefully was related just to a single interceptor,” not to a systemic issue with the Standard Missile-3 Block 1A, the same missile used in February to blow apart a crippled U.S. spy satellite, Hicks said.

Nov. 5 (Bloomberg) — Russian leader Dmitry Medvedev said he would deploy new missiles in Europe, confronting the U.S. on the day Barack Obama was declared the winner in America’s presidential election.

Medvedev said he would place a short-range missile system designed to carry conventional warheads in Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between Poland and Lithuania.

“An Iskander rocket system will be deployed in the Kaliningrad region to neutralize the missile-defense system if necessary,” Medvedev said, referring to U.S. plans to place elements of a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Medvedev blamed the U.S. for failure to coordinate its economic policy with other countries so that a “local” crisis turned into a global one, leading to “a fall on the markets of the whole planet.” He also renewed his assertion that the U.S. provoked the war between Russia and Georgia in August.

MOSCOW, August 27 (RIA Novosti) – Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has said Russia will have to respond militarily to the deployment of elements of a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe.

The deal to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland was reached in mid-August, and followed the signing of an agreement on July 8 by the U.S. and Czech foreign ministries to place a U.S. radar in the Czech Republic.

“These missiles are close to our borders and constitute a threat to us,” Medvedev said in an interview with Al-Jazeera television on Tuesday. “This will create additional tension and we will have to respond to it in some way, naturally using military means.”

MOSCOW, August 21 (RIA Novosti) – Russia is ready to supply Syria with defensive weapons, the Russian foreign minister said on Thursday following a meeting between the two countries leaders in Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi.

MOSCOW: President Vladimir Putin lashed out at NATO plans to continue its eastward expansion, saying Russia would see the induction of Ukraine and Georgia as an “immediate threat” to its security and react accordingly.

“The presence of a powerful military bloc on our borders, whose members are guided by Article 5 of the Washington Treaty will be seen as direct threat to our national security,” Mr. Putin said at a news conference after the NATO-Russia Council meeting on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Bucharest. It was Mr. Putin’s farewell interaction with the Western leaders. He steps down on May 7, when new President Dmitry Medvedev takes the oath.

NATO leaders refrained from granting a Membership Action Plan to Ukraine and Georgia on Thursday, but promised to do it later, insisting that the NATO doors were open for the two post-Soviet republics.

Warning that Russia would react strongly to the move, Mr. Putin said: “Let us be honest with each other – we will treat you as you treat us.”